Microsoft Research Trio Elected to National Academy of Engineering

February 14, 2003
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WASHINGTON D.C., Feb. 14, 2003 — Three senior researchers with Microsoft Research (MSR), including Microsoft®
Senior Vice President Rick Rashid, are among the 77 distinguished engineers whose election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) was announced here today.

Senior MSR researchers Turner Whitted, a computer graphics authority, and Phil Bernstein, a database specialist, were elected to the academy along with Rashid, the Microsoft senior vice president who heads MSR.

Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer, according to a statement from the Academy. Membership honors those who have made “important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature of engineering theory and practice,” and those who have demonstrated accomplishment in “the pioneering of new fields of engineering, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Bernstein was cited by the Engineering academy for his contributions to transaction-processing and database systems, while Whitted was honored for his graphics work in the area of recursive ray-tracing. The honors to Rashid note not only his contributions to advances in operating systems but also his overall leadership in industrial research.

In addition to 77 new members in the U.S., the NAE’s president, Wm. A. Wulf, today announced election of nine new foreign associates. Total U.S. membership in the Academy now numbers 2,138, while the number of foreign associates is 165.

Microsoft as a corporation now has 13 members in the Academy.

“Our mission in Microsoft Research is to advance the state of the art in computer science and to be at the forefront in our fields of research,” said Rick Rashid. “It is a tremendous honor to be among our industry and academic colleagues to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.”

Through MSR, which Microsoft founded in 1991, the company hopes to help shape the future of computing by expanding the potential of the PC and other devices, as well as imagining new solutions and possibilities to life in and beyond the Digital Decade. More than 700 MSR employees conduct research at four laboratories worldwide — Redmond, Wash., the California Bay Area and Silicon Valley; Cambridge, England, and Beijing, China — on projects ranging from artificial intelligence and speech recognition to quantum computing and programming languages.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.